The Pain of Secrets
by IantojJackh
Summary: Ianto would like nothing more, than to forget his fifteenth year alive, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. This is just another stumbling block in the early life of Ianto Jones. He will always survive. Part of the Secrets Verse.


**Title**: The Pain of Secrets  
><strong>Author<strong>: iantojjackh  
><strong>Beta<strong>: miss_bekahrose. Thank you again for all your help.  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Ianto visits his ill father everyday in the hospital when one day a meeting in a lift gives him an opportunity he thought was lost. Part of the Secrets Verse.  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Ianto, Barry Willams & OMC (Ianto's father)  
><strong>Word Count<strong>: ~2.5 k  
><strong>Spoiler<strong>: Set pre-series. This is part of my Secrets Verse (Follows Secret Life of a Welsh Teenager and set before Ianto Jones: Master of Secrets)  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: Dysfunctional family  
><strong>Disclaimer<strong>: Not mine. Just borrowing for a bit. Everyone will be put back from where they came when I'm done.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Written for trope-bingo square: meet the parents. This is a slightly different take on your average meet the parents.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Th<strong>_**_e Pain of Secrets_**

Ianto sat in the chair next to his father's hospital bed, looking around the drab colourless room. The ill man was berating his son yet again though Ianto had learned to tune the man out by now, but a sharp rap to his knuckles with a bedpan made the teenager wince.

"Listen to me when I'm talking to you. You're just like your mother, head always in the clouds. Keep this up and you won't amount to anything." Cai Jones growled at his son, a constant disappointment in his eyes since the day Ianto was born.

"Then I'll be taking after you!" Ianto snapped back without thinking. He took a deep breath and had to remind himself that cirrhosis that was slowly killing the man, making his father difficult to deal with and a lot of his frustrations were taken out on Ianto. Rhiannon hardly came to visit since she was too busy with her own family, so it fell to Ianto to visit the man daily and deal with his verbal abuse while trying to balance his school work. His father's mind games were tiresome, but sometimes the old man knew right where to hit Ianto where it would hurt the most.

"Insolent thing." Ianto was once again smacked with the bedpan.

"Yes, because you and Rhiannon made so much out of your lives. I've had such stellar role models to look up to."

"Says the boy who was arrested six months ago. You didn't think I'd ever find out about that, did you?" Cai's sneer turned sinister. "It's only a matter of time before you end up locked away until you're old and grey. You think you're so better than all of us, but you're the worst. Never knowing your place."

Ianto shrugged and rolled his eyes. It was useless to argue with his father when he got like this. "As soon as I'm old enough, I'll be gone and you'll never have to see ever again."

Ianto had enough and was done being a punching bag for the day and stood up and wiped his hands on his jeans. "See you tomorrow, dad." The statement lacked any emotion. Ianto was tired mentally and physically and was done with **_everything_**. He wondered when things would finally start to go his way; life had taught Ianto that you had to make your own luck, and it was something he still had trouble with.

As Ianto left the room he mentally blocked out the yelling still coming from his father's room. His father had always been hard on him and as the older man's health deteriorated, the nastier Cai became. Like a robot, Ianto went to the lift and pressed the down call button. Ianto always stopped for a coffee at the hospital cafeteria before he walked home. It was the same ritual every day: school, hospital and then home.

The lift made one stop on the third floor- which was labour and delivery. A middle age man got on and just as the door was about to close a plump middle aged woman stuck her arm in to stop the doors from sliding closed.

"Barry, don't forget to bring me and Liv something. She'll be hungry when she wakes up."

"I will."

The lift doors began to close again and once more the woman stopped them. "And nothing too fattening. Fruit would be good. Make sure it's fresh, not like last time. And fix your hair, it's a mess. Also bring something back for the baby. He should have at least one gift around for him."

"I'll get it all, Brenda," Barry said to placate his wife. "Could you let the lift go. Someone else has some place to go." He nodded toward Ianto, who had his head down and hands in his pockets.

Brenda stiffened and her features darkened as she looked at Ianto and looked right through him. "He's just a kid. He can wait." She continued to nag her husband for a solid minute before Ianto had finally had enough.

"First off I'm not a kid." Ianto detested being dismissed like that, especially since he had been caring for himself since his mother died three years ago. "And I would like to get home before it gets dark. I have an hour and half walk home." The perturbed teenager looked between either adult to make a move.

"I'll be back in a while, Brenda." In truth, Barry needed a break from his wife. She had been in rare form since their daughter gave birth. He let out a relieved sigh as the doors finally slid shut.

As often as Barry tried to make eye contact with Ianto, he was not having any of it and stared at his feet and the moment the lift doors opened at its destination, Ianto bolted toward the cafe.

Ianto ordered his coffee his usual way- cream with two sugars- and when it came time to pay, he realised he had no money left. "Sorry about that. Just forget it," he flushed with embarrassment. It also meant he was broke until his father's benefit check came in a few days.

"Don't worry, I'll pay for it." The voice startled Ianto and he shrunk down, waiting to be insulted.

"Thank you, but it's not necessary." Ianto turned and saw it was the man from the lift with the annoying and nagging wife.

"It's the least I can do to apologise for my wife in the lift. She's gets carried away sometimes."

"It's fine. My ex could get like that sometimes. I know how it goes." Ianto hid the pain in that statement behind a gentle smile.

"How old are you, if you don't mind me asking?" Barry asked as he paid for both coffees as well as a few pastries. He didn't want to seem too pushy, but Barry thought Ianto looked at bit young to be on his own.

"I'll be sixteen in a few months." Ianto sipped at his coffee and looked to make a quick exit, but he didn't want to seem rude to someone who just had bought him coffee. He really did have to get going if he wanted to make it home by dark.

"I have a daughter your age. She just had a baby boy." Barry said with a mix of disappointment and pride.

"Congratulations." Ianto knew Olivia was due to give birth in about a month, but he didn't want to dwell on something that could never be. He thought having a child could have been his escape from the hell he lived in, that having someone to depend on him would make Ianto feel important and prove that he was not a nobody. That choice was taken away from him by Olivia and he knew with an unstable home, no court in their right mind would let him anywhere near a child.

"Thank you," Barry replied and offered Ianto a pastry, thinking he looked like he could use one. "Are you visiting family?"

"My dad. I come everyday after school." Ianto answered, exhaustion written all over his face.

"Do you want to sit for a while?" Barry asked. It seemed as if the boy could use someone to talk to.

"I really should be getting home. It's difficult to walk in the dark in some places."

"How far do you have to walk?"

"About eight kilometres."

"Every day?"

"Just about. In the rain too." Ianto began to get uncomfortable with all the questions and started to look around for the exit.

"No one can pick you up? Your mum?"

Ianto shook his head. "Mum died three years ago and my sister's husband has their car while he's working. There's no one else."

"I'm sorry."

Ianto shrugged, fighting back a smart arsed comment about the cards life dealt him.

"Let me give you a ride home. The sky is about to open." Barry offered. He felt bad for Ianto. It was the father in him, especially as he had a child the same age and hoped that if his daughter were in a similar situation that someone would lend her a hand.

Ianto shook his head. "I don't want to put you out of your way. You should go back to your family. They need you, not someone who's just some kid." The bitter part of him threw Brenda's words back at Barry and Ianto immediately regretted it. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"Truth be told I need a break from my wife, she's been driving me and the hospital staff crazy since we arrived." Barry knew he shared too much, but he did not want to come off as creepy. He could hear his daughter's voice in his head, yelling at him to stop.

Ianto looked at the man like he had two heads, wondering why Barry was telling him all this. "If your wife is anything like my ex, she'd be mad as hell if you left her to help someone you didn't know." wasn't used to having help offered to him so freely.

"I take it you're not on good terms with your ex?"

"Um, look I don't want to seem ungrateful, but I don't know you and that's too personal a question.". He contradicted himself with his next breath. "She dumped me because I'm from a council estate." Ianto said sarcastically Perhaps there was part of him that wanted to unload what he was going through but it was a new concept. "Don't worry I'm not going to rob you." Ianto took the familiar defensive pose and clenched his jaw.

"I didn't even think that." It was obvious to Barry that this kid had never had help offered to him.

"I can see you're having a rough go of things. If my daughter was alone like you are, I'd hope someone would help her out. It says a lot about a person that they visit their father everyday no matter what the weather is like. I'm sure he appreciates it."

Ianto shook his head. "He doesn't, actually."

"That's a shame. You seem like a fine young man. I wish my daughter had met someone like you instead of the pig that left her alone and pregnant." Only if either knew the irony behind that statement.

Ianto grimaced and sighed heavily. "You don't really know well enough to be certain about that. I could be feeding you a line you want to hear. Besides, you don't even know my name." Ianto stayed because he was intrigued to see where this conversation would go.

"It is obvious what you are trying to do. You're are trying to get me to think negatively of you. "

"Am I?" Ianto raised a skeptical eyebrow. "What are you some kind of shrink?"

"Yes, I'm a psychologist. And so we won't be strangers anymore, my name is Barry." He held a hand out to the teenager. Barry was glad the young man's defences had started to come down and there was a chance he could be let in.

"Ianto." Ianto shook the man's hand.

"So prove to me you're not a bad person. Would you leave a girl pregnant? My wife seems to think all boys your age would." Barry didn't see Ianto's whole demeanour change with his question.

"It's easy for one to say they would stay if they were never put in such a situation. However, as someone who has been in that situation, I had every intention of staying. Even proposed, but I wasn't good enough for her or her mother, apparently." Ianto's whole demeanor changed, venom spitting forth as he recalled the night Olivia walked out on him as he slept.

It felt like once that dam was broken, everything came tumbling out. It started with Ianto's father pushing too hard from the day he was born and could never quite live up to his father's lofty expectations. Then there was his sister dressing him up like a girl and sometimes it included makeup. Ianto even mentioned the time when his father pushed him too hard on the swing, causing a broken leg. There were a few good stories about the times his father took him to the cinema and his mother teaching him to bake. Then came the horrific day, three years ago when his mother was fatally injured in a hit and run.

Now his father was battling end stage liver disease and it was only a matter of time before he was gone too. On top of it all, unable to be forgotten was the heartbreak caused by Olivia and never having the chance to know his child.

Nearly an hour passed as Ianto voiced his problems and Barry listened and offered advice where needed.

For Ianto it felt like a weight had been lifted from him, he was not condemned or ridiculed for how he felt. He stood up, feeling lighter than ever. "Thank you for letting me talk. I've kept you for long enough and now I really should be getting home."

"You're welcome," Barry said sincerely as he grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. "If you ever need someone to talk to again, don't hesitate to ask." He quickly scribbled on the paper and handed it to Ianto. "The top number is my office and the other is my home line."

Ianto paled as he read the small scrap of paper. Williams was a common surname, just like Jones. It was a coincidence that the surname was the same as Olivia's, but what was not a coincidence was the same home phone number.

He recalled the moment in the lift.

_Barry, don't forget to bring me and Liv something._

Liv...Olivia. Olivia Williams, the first girl to break his heart.

Ianto had just laid his life story out to the the father of the girl he had impregnated. A girl who had given birth today.

Ianto was a father. There was a little boy who would never know him because he came from the wrong part of town.

For a brief second, Ianto debated telling Barry who he really was and that it was Olivia's fault she was alone. Barry already knew that, but had not known when Ianto had told Barry his ex left him. Barry did not know Ianto's ex was his daughter.

Instead, Ianto took a different path, one that gave some closure to the Olivia chapter of his life. He stared at the paper for a minute before speaking. "Mr. Williams, I wonder if you could do me a small favour..."

Barry led Ianto to the nursery and pointed out the newest addition to the Williams family, giving Ianto the opportunity to meet his son for the one and only time. It was love at first sight; the new father was stunned at the perfect beauty of the wrinkled newborn swaddled in his cot.

In his mind, Ianto spoke. "I'm sorry I can't be a father to you, but it's for the best. I can't give you anything other than love and you can't survive on love alone. Take care little man. And I won't mind if you give your mum hell whenever you can. Goodbye. Know I'll always love you."

**The end! Please leave a comment!**


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